Richard Engel of NBC Is Freed in Syria

Richard Engel, the chief foreign correspondent for NBC News, and three of his crew members were freed on Monday after five days in captivity in Syria, the news organization said on Tuesday.

The journalists were unharmed. The news organization released a short statement that said, “We are pleased to report they are safely out of the country.”

The identities of the kidnappers and their motives were unknown. But an article on the NBC News Web site quotes Mr. Engel as saying their captors “were talking openly about their loyalty to the government” of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Their kidnapping once again highlights the perils of reporting from Syria, which is said by the Committee to Protect Journalists to be “the world’s most dangerous place for the press.”

NBC declined to specify the number of crew members that were with Mr. Engel. Two of the crew members, John Kooistra and Ghazi Balkiz, appeared with Mr. Engel on NBC’s “Today” show on Tuesday morning. A third, Aziz Akyavas, spoke at a news conference in Turkey. Mr. Akyavas said in an interview on the Turkish television channel NTV that a technician who traveled with the crew was still missing. NBC did not respond to a request for comment about that report.

Mr. Engel and the crew members covertly entered Syria several times this year to report on the insurgency that is fighting Mr. Assad there. Mr. Engel was last seen on television last Thursday in a taped report from Aleppo, Syria’s commercial capital, where he reported that “the Syrian regime appears to be cracking, but the rebels remain outgunned.”

In order to transmit their report in safety, Mr. Engel and his crew apparently crossed the border into Turkey. Their effort to cross back into the country on Thursday led to their capture.

About 15 men, Mr. Engel said on the “Today” show, “just literally jumped out of the trees and bushes” and “dragged us out of the car.” The kidnappers killed one of the rebels whom the crew had been traveling with, he said.

NBC’s Web site said there was “no claim of responsibility, no contact with the captors and no request for ransom during the time the crew was missing.”

Mr. Engel said on “Today” that the kidnappers had a plan to exchange the crew for several people being held by Syrian rebels. “We were told that they wanted to exchange us for four Iranian agents and two Lebanese people who are from the Amal movement,” he said.

But the crew members were freed when the captors “ran into a checkpoint manned by members of the Ahrar al-Sham brigade, a Syrian rebel group,” NBC’s Web site reported. “There was a confrontation and a firefight ensued. Two of the captors were killed, while an unknown number of others escaped.” The rebels then helped escort the crew to the border with Turkey.

“We are very happy to be back in Turkey,” Mr. Engel said, speaking in front of cameras at Cilvegozu border gate in southern Turkey. He added, “The last five days are the days that we want to forget.”

NBC tried to keep the crew’s disappearance a secret for several days while it sought to ascertain their whereabouts. Its television competitors and many other major news organizations, including The New York Times, refrained from reporting on the situation, in part out of concern that any reporting could worsen the danger for the crew. News outlets similarly refrained from publishing reports about a 2008 kidnapping in Afghanistan of David Rohde of The New York Times and a local reporter, Tahir Ludin. The two reporters escaped in June 2009 after seven months in captivity.

In the case of Mr. Engel, some Web sites reported speculation about his disappearance on Monday. NBC declined to comment until the crew members were safely out of Syria on Tuesday.

While none of the crew members suffered any physical injuries, there was “psychological pressure,” Mr. Akyavas told NTV. He said they were blindfolded, handcuffed, and “every now and then had guns pointed on our heads. It was not pleasant.”

In his comments on “Today” Mr. Engel said: “They made us choose which one of us would be shot first, and when we refused there were mock shootings. They pretended to shoot Ghazi several times.”

The crew members were also filmed for a video that showed them being held in a small, nondescript room.

Mr. Engel is perhaps the best-known foreign-based correspondent on television in the United States. Hop-scotching from Iraq to Afghanistan to Egypt and other countries in recent years, he has had more airtime than any other such correspondent at NBC, ABC or CBS. Thus the news of his kidnapping and safe release is likely to generate widespread interest from viewers.

Mr. Engel has worked for NBC since May 2003, two months into the Iraq war. He was promoted to chief foreign correspondent in 2008. At the time, the NBC News president Steve Capus said, “There aren’t enough superlatives to describe the work that Richard has done in some of the most dangerous places on earth for NBC News. His reporting, his expertise on the situation in the Middle East, his professionalism and his commitment to telling the story of what is happening there is unparalleled.”

The “NBC Nightly News” anchor Brian Williams has been among Mr. Engel’s most ardent fans. Without alluding to his disappearance, Mr. Williams brought up Mr. Engel while being interviewed onstage at a charity fund-raiser in New Jersey on Sunday night. “What I know about Richard Engel is, he’s fearless, but he’s not crazy,” Mr. Williams said. When Mr. Engel’s name came up, there was spontaneous applause from the crowd.

Brian Stelter reported from New York and Sebnem Arsu from Istanbul. Bill Carter contributed reporting from New York.

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U.S. moves ahead on new downtown L.A. courthouse

Downtown Los Angeles is finally getting its new federal courthouse, and it's going to stand out amid the aging government buildings in the Civic Center.

A 550,000-square-foot courthouse — planned for the southwest corner of Broadway and 1st Street, across from the old county law library and the Los Angeles Times building — will feature a bright, serrated facade and a structural design that allow the structure to appear to float over its stone base, officials said.

It will have a public plaza along 1st Street near recently opened Grand Park. Officials say the building's design has received a "platinum" rating for energy efficiency from the U.S. Green Building Council.

The U.S. General Services Administration is moving forward on the project despite last-minute opposition from some Republicans in Congress, who question the viability of the agency's plans to sell the federal courthouse on North Spring Street to private developers. The lawmakers also questioned whether the extra courtrooms were actually necessary.

The GSA awarded a $318-million contract last week to the architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Clark Construction Group, and released several renderings of the proposed design. The building will rise on a 3.6-acre lot on Broadway that city officials have long wanted to develop.

"We are moving toward the groundbreaking of a critically needed facility that will resolve long-standing security and space issues," Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-East Los Angeles) said in a statement. "At a time when we need to keep investing in our recovering economy, we expect the courthouse to create thousands of new jobs in the construction industry and related businesses."

Peter Zellner, faculty member at Southern California Institute of Architecture, noted that the courthouse design in some ways is reminiscent of Mid-Century architectural styles of other Los Angeles government centers, particularly the Wilshire Federal Building. Zellner also suggested the architects consider the courthouse plaza as part of a chain of public spaces spilling down from the Walt Disney Concert Hall.

The courthouse will include 24 courtrooms and 32 judicial chambers. Along with the judges of the U.S. District Court, the building will be used by the U.S. Marshals Service, U.S. attorneys' office and the Federal Public Defender.

Federal judges have been pushing for new space downtown since the late 1990s. In addition to the Spring Street courthouse, federal judges occupy space elsewhere in downtown, but they have complained about overcrowding and security issues.

Construction on the courthouse is expected to begin sometime next year, with completion set for 2016, the GSA said.

The agency also announced that it had released a formal "request for information" to solicit ideas for adaptive reuse of one of the old federal courthouses, on North Spring Street. Under the agency's plan, the 72-year-old building would be sold to a private developer, with the proceeds to help finance construction of a second federal office building next to the new courthouse.

Some real estate experts have questioned whether the exchange proposal would be feasible, saying it could be difficult for a private owner to adapt the old courthouse because of its structural issues, location and historic status. And the Republican critics of the courthouse plan expressed concern that if the GSA could not manage to sell the old courthouse, it would be stuck with a vacant building and higher costs to taxpayers.

There is still no specific timeline on when the exchange would be made, a GSA spokeswoman said, but officials remain upbeat about the plan.

"This step is just another example of GSA's commitment to providing real value to the American public," said acting GSA Administrator Dan Tangherlini.

sam.allen@latimes.com

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Q&A: Claire Diaz-Ortiz, the Woman Who Got the Pope on Twitter

At 30, Claire Diaz-Ortiz already has a pretty impressive resume. She works as the Manager of Social Innovation at Twitter, founded a charity to help orphaned children in sub-Saharan Africa and literally wrote the book on how to use social networking for philanthropy. But last week she added something rather special to her curriculum vitae: She got the Pope on Twitter.

Diaz-Ortiz, who has been working with the Vatican since their forays into the social networking platform earlier this year, served as the social networking platform’s primary liaison with the Holy See for the launch of Pope Benedict XVI’s official Twitter account. The pontiff’s first tweets appeared on the @Pontifex feed on Wednesday, along with seven other coordinated accounts with identical content in Spanish, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Polish and Arabic.

Diaz-Ortiz spoke to Wired from Rome about the unique issues of helping the Pope join the world of social media, the surprising technological progressiveness of the Vatican, and the complicated significance of papal retweets and follows.

Wired: So how did the process of getting the Pope on Twitter begin? Did you reach out to the Vatican or did they reach out to you?

Claire Diaz-Ortiz: When I started at Twitter about four years ago, my mandate was to work with non-profits and organizations that had an interest in using Twitter to make a difference. Almost a year ago, we started to do some basic data crunching in terms of what our users really do on Twitter. A colleague on our team was looking through some tweets and saw what he thought was an anomaly at the time, which was that Bible verses were doing really well on Twitter. Lots of people were retweeting and favoriting them.

Then we started diving in deeper and realized that religious content on Twitter has an incredible spread. It does very well. Religious leaders punch far above their weight; a religious leader might have 1/50th the number of followers of a large celebrity but can still generate more retweets and more favorites and more engagement. The Pope first came on twitter in 2010 with a number of accounts to send information for Vatican radio and Vatican news service…. The next step was in early 2012 when [the Vatican] launched an account called @Pope2YouVatican. It’s not a great name; Jon Stewart even did a really funny bit about how the Pope couldn’t find a better username than that…. I had just started working with religion a couple months earlier. I reached out to them and they immediately jumped on it and said hey, we’ve been really trying to push this forwards in terms of an individual account. So I did reach out to them, but they were more than excited and it’s been pretty symbiotic ever since.

Wired: Did the Vatican have concerns about what it would mean for the Pope to join Twitter?

Diaz-Ortiz: Of course. They are a conservative organization, and they obviously have a lot of concerns about making sure that the Pope’s persona remains intact and his messaging remains strictly controlled by the Vatican. But at the same time, they are extremely innovative, as I found the first day I walked into their offices back in March [2012]. They want to reach believers where they are and they know that believers are online. They launched a YouTube account in 2009, and [Twitter] was a natural step for them. I think people forget some of the ways the Vatican has been innovative over the years. They were great about radio really early on despite many protests from people who said, “the church shouldn’t be on the radio, that’s crazy!” Even though there might be some dissent in the Catholic community about whether the Pope should be tweeting, I think the Vatican very clearly says yes…

There has been some natural dissent, but you expect that from within the Catholic community from people who think that perhaps the Pope should be more reverent than Twitter…. But we already have an ongoing list I’m working on with the Vatican of new archbishops and cardinals who are saying, “Hey, the Pope’s doing this; now I can do this.” That’s exactly what the Vatican wanted from this. They want to see a lot of the engagement coming from the Catholic community.

Wired: How similar or different was dealing with the brand management of the Pope on Twitter compared to a Hollywood celebrity?

Diaz-Ortiz: I think there are a couple of key differences. Obviously what we see with an average Hollywood celebrity is they’re more interested in personal branding and that’s obviously not done with the Pope. The Vatican wants the Pope to connect with people as much as possible and are encouraging engagement with the Catholic community, but they’re not trying to have the pope get out there and self-promote on Twitter…. In contrast to that, an obvious similarity is the issue of security. And that’s more of a concern for the Vatican than it’s been for many of high-profile Hollywood folks that we’ve worked with. The Vatican is very, very concerned about whether his account could be hacked and maintaining the integrity of his different Twitter accounts. That’s been an issue from the beginning, but we deliver secure solutions for all our users, and we will do that to our best extent with the Pope as well.

Wired: The Pope has used his Twitter feed to respond to several questions so far, although he didn’t tag the users who wrote the questions. Will this type of back and forth interaction be a big part of his social media strategy moving forwards?

Diaz-Ortiz: We’re hoping that with the Vatican we’ll be able to develop some great sort of events in the coming years that will highlight the question and answer [interaction]. The thing that’s really important to the Vatican is that all the tweets will be his actual words. The several tweets he’ll be sending out each week – they’re not sure of the exact number yet – will be coming from things he’s saying at his Wednesday audience or his Sunday service.

Wired: How big of a social media team does the Pope have to run his eight different accounts?

Diaz-Ortiz: [laughs] It’s amazing how small it is. [His] social media is less than one person’s full-time job… So many people on the Vatican side have been receiving that question and they just find it hysterical. They really are strapped for resources. Once again, it’s been amazing what they’ve been able to do. Another thing I should mention is that one of the other key concerns for the Pope’s account that’s different from a lot of high-profile individuals we work with is that it’s really, really important for his account to be international. The launch last week wasn’t a launch of one account; it was a launch of eight accounts. Those eight accounts are just the ones we have for now, and the hope is that six months from now there will be many more. All these accounts in these different languages need to be providing the same content, translated. It’s a whole new concern for us at Twitter, because most of the high-profile folks we work with are really only tweeting in one language.

Wired: The English language account appears to be really dominant in terms of followers compared to the accounts in other languages. Did you find that surprising, considering the international makeup of the Catholic community?

Diaz-Ortiz: English is kind of the international language, even for the Pope. The highest percentage of Catholics in the world speak Spanish, and if you look at the eight @Pontifex accounts, [the Spanish version] is the account with the next highest number of users on it. But it’s really important to note that the Pope’s first tweet was actually from the Italian account.

Wired: Have you noticed different international reactions to the Pope joining Twitter?

Diaz-Ortiz: There’s a great graph on The Guardian did looking at the percentage of @Pontifex users based on each country’s numbers of Twitter users. It’s a fascinating to see which countries have the highest percentage of Twitter users following one of the pope’s accounts. It’s interesting to see that the two highest countries on the map were the Democratic Republic of Congo and Peru. But sure, there are different reactions. I don’t have a great line on what those different reactions are aside from the fact that a lot of people were really pleased to see that one of the eight accounts was in Arabic.

Wired: Will we be seeing the Pope use more of the engaged functions of Twitter in the future, such as retweets, @replies or following other users?

Diaz-Ortiz: Well, there are a couple of issues here. First of all, in terms of the following numbers, that’s a really interesting dilemma that we’ve seen with a lot of high profile leaders. If you look at the other biggest religious leader on Twitter, the Dalai Lamai, he’s following no one. And the Pope as well – he’s technically following himself in other languages, but that’s just so that anyone who looks at the @Pontifex account will be able to see the other ones quickly… If you ask the Vatican, they haven’t quite determined what will be the barometer for deciding who they would follow. It’s a hard thing. Again, you contrast it with [President] Obama, and he follows 700,000 people. It’s an interesting question for a leader with such a high profile, to decide how many people they’re going to follow and whether following means endorsing, which is obviously the concern. In terms of engagement, I think we’ll have to see going forward what it means.

Wired: In terms of your future outreach to high-profile figures who aren’t on Twitter, who else would like to see joining the platform?

Diaz-Ortiz: Outside of the religious world, I would love to see [Secretary of State] Hillary Clinton join. In terms of Catholic leaders on Twitter we’re looking at many of the cardinals out there. We’re also always interested in more English-speaking Muslim leaders. Some of them are doing really well, but I’d like that area to increase as well.

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Jason Mraz tops Myanmar anti-trafficking concert

YANGON, Myanmar (AP) — American singer-songwriter Jason Mraz mixed entertainment with education to become the first world-class entertainer in decades to perform in Myanmar, with a concert to raise awareness of human trafficking.

Mraz’s 2008 hit “I’m Yours” was the finale for Sunday night’s concert before a crowd of about 50,000 people at the base of the famous hilltop Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the country’s biggest city.

Local artists, including a hip-hop singer, also played at the event organized by the anti-trafficking media group MTV EXIT — for “End Exploitation and Trafficking” —in cooperation with U.S. and Australian government aid agencies and the anti-slavery organization Walk Free.

Myanmar is emerging from decades of isolation under a reformist elected government that took office last year after almost five decades of military rule. It has been one of the region’s poorest countries, and its bad human rights record made it the target of political and economic sanctions by Western nations.

But democratic reforms initiated by President Thein Sein have led to the lifting of most sanctions, and the country is hopeful of a political and economic revival. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, the pro-democracy opposition leader, was released from house arrest in late 2010 and won a seat in parliament last April.

Mraz called his top-billed appearance at the concert a “tremendous honor.”

“I think the country is, at this time, downloading lots of new information from all around the world,” he said. “I’ve always wanted my music to be here, (for) hope and celebration, peace, love and happiness. And so I’m delighted that my music can be a part of this big download that Myanmar is experiencing right now.”

Organizers said Mraz was the first international artist to perform at an open-air, mass public concert in Myanmar. Jazz artists Count Basie, Duke Ellington and Charlie Byrd visited the country under U.S. government sponsorship in the 1970s, when it was still called Burma, but played at much smaller venues.

Many in the crowd queued for two hours before being admitted to the concert site. Yangon native Sann Oo, 31, wearing a white T-shirt with a sketch of Mraz, said he was pleased that Mraz had come and that there would be a broadcast of the event.

“His visit can promote the image of Myanmar, because people outside have been seeing the country as an insecure place, and poor,” he said. “Now they can see how we look like from the concert. It also opens the potential for more concerts by foreign artists.”

Mraz has a history of involvement with human rights and other social causes.

But there was some criticism of his visit by campaigners for Myanmar‘s Muslim Rohingya community, which has been the target of ethnic-based violence this year that has forced tens of thousands of people from their homes into makeshift refugee camps. They feel Myanmar’s government has been complicit in the discrimination, and that Mraz’s visit provides it cover with the image of being a defender of human rights.

Mraz said he was aware of the issue, but that if he didn’t come to do the concert because someone else had asked him to protest another problem, then that would not help tackle the exploitation and human trafficking issue.

“I understand that there is a lot of wrongdoing in this world,” he said. “Today I’m here for this.”

Walk Free used the occasion of Sunday’s concert to launch a campaign calling on the world’s major corporations “to work together to end modern slavery by identifying, eradicating and preventing forced labor in their operations and supply chains.” They are seeking to have the companies make a “zero tolerance for slavery pledge” by the end of March next year.

“While many think of slavery as a relic of history, experts estimate that there are currently 20.9 million people living under threat of violence, abuse and harsh penalties,” the Australia-based group said in a statement. “Within this massive number, the majority of people – more than 14.2 million – are in a forced labor situation, used to source raw materials, and create products in sectors such as agriculture, construction, manufacturing and domestic work.”

Entertainment News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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The New Old Age Blog: In the Middle: Why Elderly Couples Fight

George and Gracie (let’s call them that because using their real names would make them even unhappier than they already appear to be) are in their 80s and have been married for more than 65 years. Until recently they seemed to ride the waves that are inevitable in any marriage that spans nearly seven decades; through good and bad, they were partners and best friends.

But lately — ever since her hospitalization and his fall — they have been arguing more bitterly than usual (“Do you have to make such a mess in the kitchen?”), criticizing each other (“Why haven’t you dealt with the insurance company yet?”), withdrawing from each other, and generally making each other more miserable, more often than ever before.

This kind of degenerative relationship is not uncommon among the elderly in even the happiest marriages, marriage therapists and geriatricians said. But that is small comfort to either the couple in the middle of the maelstrom, or the children who care for them, as evidenced by a number of postings on caregiver blogs. As some of the children have wondered there: “Why can’t we all just get along?”

Therapists and others who work with the elderly said the first step to addressing the problem is understanding where it came from.

“A key question is whether the marital bickering is part of a lifelong marital style or a change,” said Dr. Linda Waite, director of the Center on Demography and Economics of Aging at NORC/University of Chicago. Is it new behavior – or just new to the grown children who are suddenly so deeply enmeshed in their parents’ lives that they are only now noticing that something is amiss?

How much of the problem is really just the marriage style? “Some couples like to fight and argue – it keeps their adrenaline going,” said Dr. Nancy K. Schlossberg, professor emerita of counseling psychology at the University of Maryland and author of “Overwhelmed: Coping With Life’s Ups and Downs.”

Sometimes the best judges of whether there is a problem are outsiders, said Dr. William Dale, chief of geriatrics at the University of Chicago Geriatrics Medicine. Pay attention if someone says, “‘Gee, Mom seems more argumentative or withdrawn than the last time I saw her,’” Dr. Dale advised.

If the tone or severity of the marital tensions seem new, then it is important to find out why. The causes could be mental or physical, doctors say.

On the mental front, increased anger and fighting could be one of the first signs of mild cognitive impairment, a precursor of dementia or Alzheimer’s, in one or both of the spouses, said Dr. Lisa Gwyther, director of the Duke Center for Aging Family Support Program and an associate professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences.

Dr. Dale concurs: “There is good evidence that the earliest signs of cognitive impairment are often emotional changes” — anger, anxiety, depression — “rather than cognitive ones” — memory, abstract thought.

But these early signs of cognitive decline can be so subtle that neither the spouses themselves, or their grown children, recognize them for what they are, Dr. Gwyther said. So husband and wife blame each other for the changes and allow feelings of hurt and resentment to grow.

Withdrawing from activities that used to give them pleasure can be a telltale sign of mild cognitive impairment – and can trigger anger and arguments.

“In one couple, the husband just didn’t want to participate in the holidays — the wife got angry and said he was being lazy and stubborn,” said Dr. Gwyther. But the truth was that his cognitive decline made all the activity overwhelming, and he didn’t want anyone to know that he was anxious about not remembering everyone’s names and embarrassing himself.

Suspicion and paranoia can also accompany mild cognitive decline and precipitate distrust and hurtful accusations. Dr. Gwyther recalled another woman who “called her daughter frantic because she said her husband dropped her at her chemo appointment, went to park the car, and didn’t return to get her.” The woman couldn’t imagine that her husband could possibly have lost his sense of time and direction, Dr. Gwyther added. She took it personally, complaining to her daughter that “your father doesn’t seem to care any more.”

Dr. Dale told of a spouse who accused her mate of infidelity because “she was convinced that when he was out grocery shopping he was really having an affair.”

Hoarding, an early symptom of mild cognitive impairment, can also create tension in a marriage. (For new treatments, see this recent post by my colleague Paula Span.)

When one couple came to a counseling session with Dr. Norman Abeles, emeritus professor of psychology and former director of psychological clinic at Michigan State University, the hoarding spouse finally said she did it because she thought that they would run out of money, “even though there was enough money to go around.” Dr. Abeles said that incident led to her diagnosis of mild cognitive impairment.

Adding to the confusion, mild cognitive impairment, or M.C.I., comes and goes. “There are good days and bad days, good hours and bad hours,” said Dr. Gwyther. “Alzheimer’s and dementia don’t start on Tuesday — it’s a slow insidious onset.” But the diagnosis is becoming more common: The Institute for Dementia Research and Prevention predicts that 1 in 6 women, and 1 in 10 men, who live past the age of 55 will develop dementia in their lifetime.

“Spouses find it difficult to know when their partner with M.C.I. is acting differently, usually badly, due to the advancing illness or due to ‘willful’ personality issues,” said Dr. Dale, citing a 2007 study in the journal Family Relations exploring the problems this can create for couples.

Blaming is often easier than understanding. Another of Dr. Gwyther’s patients was furious at her husband for not filing their taxes. “He’s a C.P.A.,” she said. “How could we owe back taxes?” It did not occur to her that he might be unable to handle that task — and was too frightened about his deteriorating mental focus to let her know.

But as harmful as mental decline can be for a marriage, it is just part of the equation. Physical ailments – even those that seem completely unrelated to marital relations – “can upset the equilibrium of the marriage,” according to a study in The Canadian Medical Association Journal.

“Most men get angry at what’s happened to them when they get ill, women get angry and scared when he’s not what he used to be — so they fight,” said Dr. Schlossberg.

Chronic illnesses, like diabetes, arthritis and heart disease, can have a strong negative effect on mood, said Dr. Waite, who will soon be publishing a study on the subject. Diabetes is so often accompanied by depression that Dr. Waite said “one of my colleagues argues that that it is even part of the disease.”

And ailments can have an effect on a couple’s sex life — which can compound the marital problems, doctors said.

“Diabetes brings on neuropathy,” said Dr. Waite. “That means touching and feeling in sex is not as rewarding.” Without the pleasures of affectionate touching — whether a passing hug at the sink or more — tensions can build. That’s why, if a couple is having problems with sex, they are more likely to have problems in the relationship — and vice versa, according to a 2007 New England Journal of Medicine study of sex and health among older adults.

Other changes in circumstances — retirement, shifting roles, the loss of autonomy, disparities in health and abilities — can wreak havoc. Losing independence can feel like losing oneself — and if you don’t know who you are any more, how can you know how to relate to your spouse?

“Fighting may come from a misguided notion that you can regain power by asserting it over your spouse,” said Dr. Schlossberg, whose observations are echoed in a 1984 study in The Canadian Journal of Medicine. “It doesn’t work, it’s false power – but they’ll try anything.”

The sheer exhaustion that can come from being the caregiving spouse is also bound to “make them stressed and angry,” said Dr. Waite. Not to mention guilty and resentful — never a prescription for happy marital relations.

“Part of the trap for the caregiver is the idea that you have to do it all, and the guilt you feel when you cannot live up to it,” said Dr. Gordon Herz, a psychologist in private practice in Madison, Wisc. Not surprisingly, resentment can soon follow, Dr. Herz added, because it is hard to admit to anyone that, “‘this is too much for me.’”

What can outside caregivers — children or other loved ones — do about these golden marriages on the rocks? Should they intervene — or butt out? And can marital therapy help — or is it too late to change?

Share your thoughts and experiences — and on Tuesday we will try to provide some advice from experts.

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Bucks Blog: The Over-The-Wall Portfolio for Excess Cash

Carl Richards is a financial planner in Park City, Utah, and is the director of investor education at the BAM Alliance. His book, “The Behavior Gap,” was published this year. His sketches are archived on the Bucks blog.

If you’re an entrepreneur, you’ll spend years pouring everything — time, money, passion — into your businesses with the hope that someday it will pay off. If things go well, you’ll wake up one morning and find yourself with excess time, energy and, of course, cash.

Great! But now you have to figure out what do with that cash, and this is when things can get dangerous, fast.

Most entrepreneurs get twitchy at the thought of idle money. They’re used to taking big chances and are comfortable with risk. So, there’s a temptation to assume the same approach to controlled risk when investing outside their business.

One of the smartest guys I know runs an incredibly successful company but provided a textbook example of this approach. As the business matured and started throwing off excess cash, he began thinking about what to do with it. He invested in some pretty strange ventures. He backed a doctor with a new toothbrush design, a car wash and a company that made kayak paddles.

He knew nothing about any of these businesses. Not surprisingly, he lost that money.

Instead of sticking to what he knew to make money and protecting the profits, he made the classic mistake of thinking he could do more. He took risks with money that he promised himself he would never lose.

It’s like what Warren E. Buffett said about the super-smart and incredibly wealthy founders of Long-Term Capital Management, who ended up doing something really dumb: “To make money they didn’t need, they risked what they did have and did need, and that’s foolish.”

Don’t be foolish. If you’re fortunate to have enough money to last for a good long while, the game can, and should, change. Of course you can still focus on growing your business. Or, if you’re a serial entrepreneur, you can build the next one. But at the same time, you can start building a portfolio to protect your future.

One thing I have heard over and over when interviewing successful entrepreneurs is the idea of what I call the Over-the-Wall Portfolio. Of course, the entrepreneurs didn’t call it that. They often referred to it as the safe money or the money they promised their spouse they’d never lose.

Whatever you call it, the concept is pretty simple: You take the excess cash your business generates, or the lump sum from the sale of a business, and throw it over the wall into stable (and probably boring) investments.

Then you forget about it.

The allocation of an Over-the-Wall Portfolio will vary, but here are a few general guidelines to consider:

• Boring. Remember: excitement comes from being an entrepreneur (or the movies), not your over-the-wall money.
• Liquid. If something goes wrong, you want to be able to get to the money.
• Diversified. You can get rich by putting all your eggs in one basket, but you stay wealthy by being diversified.
• Passive. The Over-the-Wall Portfolio can’t depend on you for day-to-day management. You’re too busy with your business and having a life. The last thing you should be doing at night is logging into your day-trading account.

The best part of this strategy? It lets you get back to doing what you do best — running your business. But you get the added comfort of knowing that if your business fails, you’ll be O.K.

Eventually, my entrepreneur friend recognized his problem. One day, he told me, “Carl, I finally figured it out. My job is to stay focused on my business and make money. And with the money I make, I have to be sure I never lose any of it.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

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Speculation over autism, but shooter's 'why' has no easy answer

Among the details to emerge in the aftermath of the Connecticut elementary school massacre was the possibility that the gunman had some form of autism.

Adam Lanza, 20, had a personality disorder or autism, his brother reportedly told police. Former classmates described him as socially awkward, friendless and painfully shy.

While those are all traits of autism, a propensity for premeditated violence is not. Several experts said that at most, autism would have played a tangential role in the mass shooting -- if Lanza had it at all.

FULL COVERAGE: Connecticut school shooting

“Many significant psychiatric disorders involve social isolation,” said Catherine Lord, director of the Center for Autism and the Developing Brain at New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Autism, she said, has become a catch-all term to describe anybody who is awkward.

Some type of schizophrenia, delusional disorder or psychotic break would more clearly fit the crime, experts said.

The hallmark characteristics of autism are social inability, communication problems and repetitive behaviors or obsessive interests. It emerges in early childhood and exists on a vast spectrum, from those who bang their head against the wall to those who can recite train schedules from memory.

PHOTOS: Connecticut school shooting

The rate of autism has skyrocketed over the last two decades, largely because of an expanded definition of the disorder and increasing awareness. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that 1 in 88 children have it.

Researchers have struggled to draw clear lines between the various forms. As a result, the American Psychiatric Assn. is folding all of its varieties into a single diagnosis next year: autism spectrum disorder.

It will include people with Asperger’s syndrome -- the higher-functioning type that Lanza was most likely to have had.

There is more aggression associated with autism than with other disabilities. But it usually amounts to a tantrum and does not involve planning, weapons or an intention to harm anybody.

People with autism are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Those who are bright -- as Lanza was by several accounts -- often face bullying.

Some wind up in trouble with the law because they are unaware of social convention, and quirkiness or attempts at being friendly get misinterpreted.

Dr. John Constantino, an autism specialist at Washington University in St. Louis, said the social detachment and withdrawal associated with the disorder can accentuate other psychiatric conditions that are connected to violence.

And the feelings of isolation often intensify after high school, with the loss of a structured environment that allows many people with autism to stay afloat.

“They sort of fall off this cliff when they don’t have a village,” Constantino said.

Lanza finished high school early and was living with his mother. Police said he was disturbed by the divorce of his parents in 2009.

None of that, of course, explains why his killed his mother, 20 elementary school students, six women at the school and then himself.

“The only way somebody could do something like this is if they totally lost touch with reality,” said Dr. Daniel Geschwind, an autism expert at UCLA. “Autistic people are not sociopaths.”

ALSO:

Suspect in massacre tried to buy rifle days before, sources say

In Newtown, death's chill haunts the morning after school shooting

Connecticut shooting: Gunman forced his way into school, police say

alan.zarembo@latimes.com

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Wired Science Space Photo of the Day: Painted Swan Nebula

Astronomers using data from ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), at the Paranal Observatory in Chile, have made an impressive composite of the nebula Messier 17, also known as the Omega Nebula or the Swan Nebula. The painting-like image shows vast clouds of gas and dust illuminated by the intense radiation from young stars.

The image shows a central region about 15 light-years across, although the entire nebula is even larger, about 40 light-years in total. Messier 17 is in the constellation of Sagittarius (the Archer), about 6000 light-years from Earth. It is a popular target for amateur astronomers, who can obtain good quality images using small telescopes.

These deep VLT observations were made at near-infrared wavelengths with the ISAAC instrument. The filters used were J (1.25 µm, shown in blue), H (1.6 µm, shown in green), and K (2.2 µm, shown in red). In the centre of the image is a cluster of massive young stars whose intense radiation makes the surrounding hydrogen gas glow. To the lower right of the cluster is a huge cloud of molecular gas. At visible wavelengths, dust grains in the cloud obscure our view, but by observing in infrared light, the glow of the hydrogen gas behind the cloud can be seen shining faintly through. Hidden in this region, which has a dark reddish appearance, the astronomers found the opaque silhouette of a disc of gas and dust. Although it is small in this image, the disc has a diameter of about 20 000 AU, dwarfing our Solar System (1 AU is the distance between the Earth and the Sun). It is thought that this disc is rotating and feeding material onto a central protostar — an early stage in the formation of a new star.

Image: ESO/R. Chini [high-resolution]

Caption: ESO

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Sundance film “End of Love” finds distributor

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Gravitas Ventures and Variance Films have acquired all North American rights to writer-director Mark Webber‘s drama “The End of Love,” the companies announced on Thursday.

The father-son drama, which debuted at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, stars Webber alongside Shannyn Sossamon (pictured), and Webber’s real-life son Isaac Love, and features appearances by Michael Cera, Jason Ritter, and Amanda Seyfried.

The film tells the story of struggling actor Mark (Webber), who is forced to grapple with his inability to grow up when the mother of his two-year-old son Isaac suddenly dies. As he kindles a relationship with a young single mother, Mark begins to realize that he can no longer remain in denial about the real-life consequences his choices have on Isaac.

Gravitas Ventures will debut the film across all major video on demand (VOD) platforms on January 21, 2013 with a theatrical release from Variance Films beginning March 1 2013 in select markets.

“Propelled by the authenticity and intimacy of the performances, our acquisition team was unanimous that ‘The End of Love’ was one of the strongest films not only of Sundance, but of all of the films we saw last year,” said Nolan Gallagher, founder and CEO of Gravitas Ventures.

“I’m thrilled that ‘The End of Love’ has found a home with Gravitas and Variance,” said Webber. “In the rapidly changing landscape of how films are seen, these two companies are at the forefront of embracing that change.”

Movies News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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As Gold Is Spirited Out of Afghanistan, Officials Wonder Why

Zalmai for The New York Times

A Kabul jewelry shop. Officials are concerned about gold being flown out of Afghanistan.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Packed into hand luggage and tucked into jacket pockets, roughly hewed bars of gold are being flown out of Kabul with increasing regularity, confounding Afghan and American officials who fear money launderers have found a new way to spirit funds from the country.

Most of the gold is being carried on commercial flights destined for Dubai, according to airport security reports and officials. The amounts carried by single couriers are often heavy enough that passengers flying from Kabul to the Persian Gulf emirate would be well advised to heed warnings about the danger of bags falling from overhead compartments. One courier, for instance, carried nearly 60 pounds of gold bars, each about the size of an iPhone, aboard an early morning flight in mid-October, according to an airport security report. The load was worth more than $1.5 million.

The gold is fully declared and legal to fly. Some, if not most, is legitimately being sent by gold dealers seeking to have old and damaged jewelry refashioned into new pieces by skilled craftsmen in the Persian Gulf, said Afghan officials and gold dealers.

But gold dealers in Kabul and current and former Kabul airport officials say there has been a surge in shipments since early summer. The talk of a growing exodus of gold from Afghanistan has been spreading among the business community here, and in recent weeks has caught the attention of Afghan and American officials. The officials are now puzzling over the origin of the gold — very little is mined in Afghanistan, although larger mines are planned — and why so much appears to be heading for Dubai.

“We are investigating it, and if we find this is a way of laundering money, we will intervene,” said Noorullah Delawari, the governor of Afghanistan’s central bank. Yet he acknowledged that there were more questions than answers at this point. “I don’t know where so much gold would come from, unless you can tell me something about it,” he said in an interview. Or, as a European official who tracks the Afghan economy put it, “new mysteries abound” as the war appears to be drawing to a close.

Figuring out what precisely is happening in the Afghan economy remains as confounding as ever. Nearly 90 percent of the financial activity takes place outside formal banks. Written contracts are the exception, receipts are rare and statistics are often unreliable. Money laundering is commonplace, say Western and Afghan officials.

As a result, with the gold, “right now you’re stuck in that situation we usually are: is there something bad going on here or is this just the Afghan way of commerce?” said a senior American official who tracks illicit financial networks.

There is reason to be suspicious: the gold shipments track with the far larger problem of cash smuggling. For years, flights have left Kabul almost every day carrying thick wads of bank notes — dollars, euros, Norwegian kroner, Saudi Arabian riyals and other currencies — stuffed into suitcases, packed into boxes and shrink-wrapped onto pallets. At one point, cash was even being hidden in food trays aboard now-defunct Pamir Airways flights to Dubai.

Last year alone, Afghanistan’s central bank says, roughly $4.5 billion in cash was spirited out through the airport. Efforts to stanch the flow have had limited impact, and concerns about money laundering persist, according to a report released last week by the United States Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction.

The unimpeded “bulk cash flows raise the risk of money laundering and bulk cash smuggling — tools often used to finance terrorist, narcotics and other illicit operations,” the report said. The cash, and now the gold, is most often taken to Dubai, where officials are known for asking few questions. Many wealthy Afghans park their money and families in the emirate, and gold dealers say more middle-class Afghans are sending money and gold — seen as a safeguard against economic ruin — to Dubai as talk of a postwar economic collapse grows louder.

But given Dubai’s reputation as a haven for laundered money, an Afghan official said that the “obvious suspicion” is that at least some of the apparent growth in gold shipments to Dubai is tied to the myriad illicit activities — opium smuggling, corruption, Taliban taxation schemes — that have come to define Afghanistan’s economy.

There are also indications that Iran could be dipping into the Afghan gold trade. It is already buying up dollars and euros here to circumvent American and European sanctions, and it may be using gold for the same purpose.

Yahya, a dealer in Kabul, said other gold traders were helping Iran buy the precious metal here. Payment was being made in oil or with Iranian rials, which readily circulate in western Afghanistan. The Afghan dealers are then taking it to Dubai, where the gold is sold for dollars. The money is then moved to China, where it was used to buy needed goods or simply funneled back to Iran, said Yahya, who like many Afghans uses a single name.

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